There’s a naval signal heavily used in my past as a Royal Navy Submariner that goes along the lines of “Bravo Zulu”. This is typically conveyed through Morse or normal frequency traffic to mean “Well Done” where actions are concerned. The best form of BZ’s available is to Splice the Mainbrace (issue the crew an alcoholic drink as a reward).

I’m sure we’ve all heard about the BA scandal that has been gripping the tech industry over the past few weeks. You know, the MASSIVE data breach affecting 380,000 transactions worldwide in which personal and financial details were compromised. The official sit rep (situation report) hasn’t yet been released as to how this situation evolved but what we do know is that BA have been hit hard from both a PR and financial point of view.

There are several ways to combat these issues and the main one is to ensure users/staff do not become complacent in their daily IT hygiene. Hygiene runs through our daily lives and shouldn’t stop after we’ve left the house in the morning and should be brought into the workplace by not only making our environments physically clean but ensuring we keep up to date with patches and definitions that are released by your operating system vendors, anti-virus vendors or software providers. Without these updates we’re left in an unhygienic environment which is full of vulnerabilities. It’s very rare that you’ll find IT security experts falling short of the general rules, IT security users on the other hand are some of the most vulnerable to malicious attacks. The relationship between IT users and IT teams needs to be closer moving into the future especially as the people who use IT will no doubt demand more availability and become more involved as they know and understand more. The best way to think of IT hygiene is to think of what would happen should you not shower for a year. DISEASE (SPAM), INFECTION (VIRUS), STINKS (ADWARE). You may end up becoming an honorary submariner!

In the past week there has been a visible upsurge in spam mail and malicious attacks that are becoming somewhat successful. My rule of thumb is to ask questions. Ask questions first no matter how stupid it sounds. If you fail to ask a question and take action first then you run the risk of obliterating your organisation’s data and being confronted with a very unhappy boss.

And remember folks: if it looks phishy, don’t take the bate. It doesn’t take much to bring down even the largest of organisations.